Tag: Creative writing

The idea that germinated as a short story became a poem because of my inability to sit still for a long time to write a story. While the words just flow for a poem, I stumble in writing a story. I realized the poem became long. My apologies.

Well the birthday is not actually today but it is being celebrated today at the university where the university library is named in his honor. His birthday is tomorrow, March 2. But hey, it’s Friday, party time and I am sure he would not mind. He most probably would have loved it today, being surrounded by young folks, many of whom must have Continue reading “Friday Freebies: It’s a Birthday”

Friday morning started cold and rainy. The thought of going down to the cold garage to make some breakfast leaving a warm bed, certainly was not inviting. Now you may be thinking why I make breakfast in the garage. We started renovation work on our kitchen and so temporarily the kitchen was set up in the garage. As the garage was not originally designed to be used as a kitchen, we have our stove in one corner and the microwave in another corner, the space in between filled with knick knacks and furniture from the living room that also being worked on at the same time. Unfortunately there is no drainage in the garage and no water connection, so the sink and the dish washer could not be hooked up. This old body is getting quite a lot of exercise going up and down the stairs to get water and do some small washing and cleaning. We had to be inventive to reduce use of water as much as possible. Unfortunately it results in unwanted wastes of paper plates, paper towels and plastic cutleries that none of us like. But I digress. As I said, we try to be resourceful to manage with the existing situation. We moved the coffee machine and the toaster to our bedroom so I could have some breakfast on my bed. The eggs can wait.

As I was sipping my coffee in bed, some thoughts came to my mind that I jotted down quickly and sharing below.

Necessity is the mother of invention. She married poverty and produced frustration.Dejected, she separated and married wealthy and gave birth to consumption.Not satisfied, she had a live-in relationship with greedy and fostered corruption.Now all of us live in confusion and waiting for destruction.

I posted it in a few Whatsapp groups and pat came a response back from my nephew in India : necessity is the mother of invention and obesity is the father of starvation.

Not sure if he was referring to my growing mid-riff. Now I am scratching my head, to starve or not to starve is the question.

I can see the sun through the blinds. Time to get out of the bed. Friday is beckoning to fry some eggs.

Not the post I had in mind to write when I got up today morning. However news that I received through social media first thing in the morning last week, not once but twice, and one of them today morning, made me change my mind

Whenever I have faced emotional issues, I have found myself going back to reading the Indian epic Mahabharata. Its stories had helped to calm my mind, providing solace and answers to many questions I have in my mind. It’s amazing that an epic that was written thousands of years back are replete with stories addressing issues that are contemporary.

Today morning as I woke up and looked at my Whatsapp messages, I was greeted with a message from on of my friend back home in India regarding the death of one of my ex-colleague. He was in the ICU for an week prior to his death. Another ex-colleague who was admitted to the same hospital around that time had passed away couple of days. Continue reading “Thursday Tidbits: Most Surprising Thing”

Two countries, one is the oldest functioning democracy and the other the largest democracy. One , where I am a naturalized citizen now and the other, my country of birth. At this time of my life I have lived nearly half of my life in each country. Both of them are currently embroiled in the question of immigration.

When I left my country of birth, my home state was undergoing nearly six years of protests and agitations to expel the illegal immigrants from a neighboring country that was threatening to change the demography of the state. Couple of weeks after I left, an accord was signed between the Prime Minister of the country and the agitating student leaders with an agreement to identify and expel immigrants after a certain date. This date automatically legitimized people who were illegally coming into the country for more than twenty years after the first National Register of Citizens was prepared. When I arrived in the country that would ultimately be my home, I found that the same issue of illegal immigration was being debated here also. After nearly a year of my being here, the President of the country signed a sweeping immigration reform bill granting amnesty to nearly three million immigrants who were in the country without proper immigration papers.

Both the accord and the amnesty were supposed to take care of “illegal” immigration for all time to come. Little that we knew at that time that after nearly three decades the same issue would be disturbing the places that I called home. We never factored in the politicians and their lack of will to solve burning issues or their willingness to push issues to the next generation for political benefits in the short term.

Now in my country of birth, current Prime Minister and the ruling party is pushing a citizenship amendment bill (CAB) to make all people of certain religious communities coming into the country from three specific countries citizens immediately. This is being done with an eye to the elections to be held soon this year though the government is trying its best to hide its purpose behind the veil of religious persecution of minorities in those three countries. Unfortunately the government had not raised the issue of religious persecution of a certain community in one of the neighboring country at all in last five years in the UN. My home state of birth is in turmoil now after three decades of the accord being signed for fear that the indigenous people will be reduced to minority if the CAB is passed and made the law of the land. This is after more than eight hundred and fifty people had laid down their lives for the cause at the hands of their own country’s police and armed forces. On the other hand, President of the country I call home now has vowed to build a wall to keep immigrants out ( and as per his words to make the country safe) and shutdown the government partially to get his wall built. Though there is no proof that a wall is a viable solution to keep people away who are desperate to make their lives better or a wall will keep people in the country safe (all the 9/11 perpetrators entered the country legally and were from a friendly country), playing to the emotion and fear of his political base the President has made a mess of the whole immigration issue.

Will the Citizenship Amendment Bill in my country of birth or the wall in the country I call home now solve the issue of immigration for all time to come. Hardly. If without addressing the root cause of immigration (which may be a topic of future discussion), political expediency is allowed to shape decisions, we will see a repetition of the issue soon.